On the one hand, you've never even heard of Thomas Mann, a Nobel laureate in literature and one of the most influential writers of the Twentieth Century, and then you tell ME not to "blindly follow" these "literary elites"? Do you even know who the literary elites are? Have you actually bothered to read what they have to say? If there's any blindness here, it's clearly with you, because you haven't even bothered to acquaint yourself with the things you're dismissing. You're blindly REJECTING literary elites here.

I'm not going to say that I agree with literary elites all the time - I frequently disagree, in fact, but Larry's point generally holds true - I'm going to put more weight on their opinions than on yours.